Why switch from ADO to ADO.NET?

Question

I have some friends who are 'old-school' VB6 database developers and I was telling them about .NET and its features, specifically ADO.NET.

In our conversation, they brought up the following reasons why they would rather stick with ADO than move to ADO.NET:

• The Dataset is disconnected (What if power fails?)
• The same amount of code still has to be written
• The new options of Dataset, BindingSource and TableAdapter seem confusing
• the same code is written programatically access the Database, all that changes is how that command is laid out

I'm looking for answers or reasons why ADO.NET is 'better' than ADO with regards to data access when it comes to Windows Forms applications. What does ADO.NET provide that ADO does not? What does it do better than ADO?

NB: I'd like examples that do not involve LINQ.

Answer 1

On the one hand, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. But on the other - VB6? Really? Sounds like ADO vs. ADO.NET is small potatoes here...

I think the issue is more VB vs. VB.NET and then the whole code-base, skill-set, other-non-technical-considerations come into play here.

Answer 2

ADO is unsupported COM-based technology. VB 6.0 is end of life unsupported technology as of March 2008. DAO, RDO, ADO are all technologies that are nearly a decade past their prime.

ADO.NET is a modern toolset for data access. In particular, LINQ to SQL and the Entity Framework take data access to new heights.